


Last Words

by bluemooning



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 01:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7461522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemooning/pseuds/bluemooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith is dying. And for once, Lance doesn’t know what to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Words

Everything feels muted now - all Lance can feel is the pounding of his heart, the percussive rhythm jumping up into his throat and taking control of his body. He’s seized up something terrible in the here and now. Everything he’s come to know so well in this place far from home - and everyone, really - it’s leaving him at the speed of light.

“Keith, please,” He says and he’s whining. He cradles Keith in his arms and holds on tight. His fingernails claw at Keith’s clothing, like maybe he could scrape fresh life into the body if he wished it hard enough. “You can’t - not here - ”

His chest constricts all over again when Keith’s dark eyes flutter open. Their gaze is unsteady, and his mouth struggles to form words. All he can manage is an unintelligible moan. But he’s looking so intently up at Lance, all the willpower is there - just not the strength to execute it.

“We - we were supposed to defeat the Galra,” Lance says, and he can’t get the whine out of his voice. _We_. _You and I_.

But he can’t be bothered to try, and it carries over in his next words. It’s an odd combination, even for Lance. “We’d crush them like, like - “

“Like ants,”

“Like ants!” Lance exclaims too loudly. He cracks a smile despite the situation. “And the universe would be saved, and then maybe the Princess would gimme a kiss,” He smirks at the thought, but Keith is growing colder in his arms and the joke falls flat. “And we would go home,”

He blinks and looks around. After he had dragged a wounded Keith over here, the other three Paladins had kept on fighting. And it really should be four of them out there, defending their universe with all their might. But somehow, no one batted an eye when Lance volunteered, in a breaking voice, to take Keith aside.

Their teammates are something else, they really are - and in this moment, Lance feels eternally grateful for them. Without them at his side, he would have been long dead.

“But didn’t...didn’t we defeat...them?” Keith says quietly, and his voice matches the world around them. The fury of battle has seemed to subside. But even if they’re just imaging it, that’s fine too. It’s really fine as long as it’s still peaceful here between them. And it would be really, really fine - just peachy, actually, if they could stay like this forever. Lance’s breathing slows subconsciously, like he could drag the moment out with his own perception of time.

“Of course we did,” He laughs. The sound hangs awkwardly in the air, but Keith doesn’t seem to care. He relaxes into Lance’s arms and his chest rises in jerky motions, and suddenly his eyes have gone wide, he’s coughing up blood and it blends in with his uniform. Lance realizes this too quickly and the morbidity of it makes more words jump to the tip of his tongue. He finds himself babbling shakily, like that might help.

“They’re gone, gone for good, because we did our job. And we did do our job, so we’ll go back to Earth. And you can come live with me, and meet my mom and dad and brothers and sisters, and my aunts and uncles and cousins - you'll meet everyone. I bet - I know they’ll love you,”

His breath hitches, and he glances down at Keith. His eyes are closed but he blinks slowly when the silence settles in. “They will?”

“Yeah, they will, they’re all really great,” Lance assures him. “Like if you don’t want to be alone, you - you don’t have to be,” That tinge of desperation is growing stronger in his voice, but he doesn’t fight it. “Keith, it’ll be - it’ll be perfect. We’ll get to live normal lives again. Peaceful lives. We saved the universe so it’s okay if we kick back, right?”

Lance stops talking and leaves the space between them wide open for Keith to say something, anything. But it doesn’t seem to register for several ticks. And when Keith finally does speak, it’s barely enough to put Lance at ease. “Yeah,”

“Hunk and Pidge and Shiro can visit us too,” Lance immediately launches into a fresh round of his fantasy - that’s all this is, a fantasy. He’s realizing this too fast and too soon, as Keith grows weaker in his arms and as the words he speaks are losing their power. “We’ll all hang out, get pizza, go bowling - normal friend stuff. Not like killing aliens or anything,”

“That’s…” Keith says, and Lance has to strain to hear. “It was fun,”

Lance laughs once and it peters out just as quickly as it came. “Yeah, dude. Fun,” Keith’s eyes are closed now, and he’s barely moving. Lance shifts his arms to support Keith’s weight more evenly. This guy is a lot heavier than he looks, he thinks. This makes him crack a smile, and with the way his cheeks are hurting, he can hardly feel the first tears trickle down. “It was a lot of fun, being a part of Voltron with everyone - with you. Even if it was hard sometimes, we - we fought hard, and it made us stronger,” Teardrops splat down onto Keith’s face and they’re coming faster by the tick. “You...you made me stronger,”

Hunk and Pidge and Shiro, they find him like that, hunched over Keith’s cold body. The smiles on their faces and their proclamation of victory fade to nothing when they see Lance in this form, his body wracked by some unseen force - his cries shaking the air around them, threatening to shatter unspoken words.

But there’s a tiny window of opportunity left, and Lance seizes it by force. He speaks in a ragged whisper he knows only he can hear. And when he doesn’t have anything more to say, that’s when he knows Keith is gone for good. The emptiness fills him to the brim and threatens to spill over when he feels his fellow Paladins at his side, hugging him tight. They don’t say a word. He shakes in their arms and holds onto Keith tighter - and the silence grows heavier, bearing down hard, in a place thousands of light years away from home and a boy’s desperate dream.

**Author's Note:**

> i love pain


End file.
